Mxsmanic wrote:
Jim Logajan writes:

Bottom line appears to be that the Young Eagles program probably
doesn't accomplish anything useful re increasing pilot population.
People who want to be pilots will do what they can to reach that goal
- the rest presumably just enjoy the chance for a free airplane ride.

I've seen figures on multiple occasions that indicate that the largest
group of private pilots (i.e., not flying as a career) consists of men
in their late forties. Perhaps efforts should not be wasted on
adolescents who might or might not be interested in aviation, and
programs should target middle-aged men who might have fewer
distractions, more money, and more developed and focused interests. I
don't see any reason why people have to start flying young in order to
enjoy it.

I would tend to agree that a "Bald Eagle" or "Old Flying Geezer" program
would likely yield greater returns. We geezers over 40 have a tiny bit
more time and money than young whippersnappers - and the realization our
days remaining on this mortal coil are dwindling. If EAA and AOPA and the
like would stop preaching to the proverbial choir, and advertise instead
in the same places, say, that RV makers do, they might see better return
on their time and investment.

Cirrus follows this philosophy to a certain extent by strongly
targeting wealthy, low-time private pilots in their marketing, which I
suspect also specifically aims for a male demographic. Multiple
characteristics of their marketing efforts suggest this. Unfortunately
it produces high accident rates, since a desire for rich Corinthian
leather in the seats for purposes of bragging rights doesn't correlate
at all with piloting skill.

That's easy for you to say, but - alas - the above paragraph was easy to
write because it is entirely opinion (on Cirrus marketing,) speculation
(on causal connection between accident rate and shallow desires,) and
unsupported factual claim (high accident rate.)

So what is the accident rate? There have been several attempts to assess
Cirrus accident rates and compare them to comparable aircraft. The
problem is that while Cirrus provides estimates for their fleet hours,
the following article claims that other manufacturers such as Cessna do
not provide any such numbers:

http://www.cirruspilots.org/content/...IsACirrus.aspx

According to that article the Cirrus models exhibit 1.42 to 1.76 fatal
accidents per 100,000 hours (depending on the time period selected - the
lower number was from a later period.) But the GA single engine fleet
exhibits about 1.86 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours.

So the factual assumption underlying your paragraph appears entirely
invalid unless you can demonstrate otherwise.

Lastly, it is interesting to note that the article indicates that members
of the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association have dramatically fewer
normalized accident rates than non-members.